Archive for September, 2012

Since its inception in 1999, a single concept has unified PREP’s curriculum and connected its community. This theme is that the study of pain is best accomplished if it is seen as a top-down (i.e., population-based) public health phenomenon as noted in the 2011 IOM Report on Pain. We are fortunate that PREP has always been situated within the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine and grateful that its Chairs and Deans — Harris Berman and Aviva Must — have shared this view and continually encouraged PREP’s growth.

Advances in pain research and education, particularly as informed by the emerging field of social neuroscience, have made PREP’s vision more and more timely. Reflecting the broader pain community’s growing awareness of PREP’s distinctive voice, this year I’ve had the privilege of delivering keynote addresses at congresses of the American Pain Society, the Special Interest Group on Pain Education of the International Association for the Study of Pain, and the American Society of Pain Educators’ PAINWeek. The specifics of each talk differed somewhat but all conveyed PREP’s underlying theme.

In response to requests from attendees at these lectures, I have assembled an interim bibliography to allow anyone interested to become better informed about some of the sources that the PREP program draws upon. Reflecting PREP’s interprofessional, eclectic outlook, many are from the humanities and social sciences, complemented by the biomedical literature. For example, according to the narrator in the novel by Greer, “I do not know what joins the parts of an atom, but it seems what binds one human to another is pain”.

Those who wish to immerse themselves in our curriculum will enroll in a course or one of our certificate or degree programs. Click here to find out more about taking a course. Following the great success this summer of PREP 233 (End of Life and Palliative Care, directed by Pam Ressler) in a blended onsite-online format, our foundational course PREP 230 is the next of our courses to be offered in this format. This fall, PREP 230 will begin on September 28. To reflect exciting advances in the field of pain, we have changed this course’s title from “Neuroanatomy, Neurophysiology and Neuropharmacology of Pain” to “Neuroscience of Pain: from Society to Synapse”. Click here to learn more about this course. As in earlier years it will be directed by Steve Scrivani, who has consistently earned high praise for his meticulous running of this course. Besides his own lectures, over the years Steve has assembled a core group of dedicated, expert faculty to provide students with an unparalleled learning experience.